What are cookies?
Cookies are small pieces of data that store information on websites and serve many purposes including keeping you logged in, personalizing individuals’ website experience, remembering your demographic and geographic information, and storing your browsing history.
First-party cookies are stored by the website itself, whereas third-party cookies are stored by separate services that follow users across multiple websites and devices. At the start of 2024, Google began to phase out third-party cookies as part of their Privacy Sandbox project.
The elimination of third-party cookies
In January, Google’s Tracking Protection was rolled out to 1% of Chrome users globally (about 30 million people!) as an initial test. This Tracking Protection restricts third-party cookies by default, requiring users to consent to enabling them for each website. In their place, Chrome will implement a privacy-friendly approach to track your online behavior, only sending out anonymized and categorized information to Google, instead of the previous hyper-specific personal data. Topics API is the Privacy Sandbox solution for ad targeting, where only the topics users are interested in are shared, not the specific websites that were visited. They aim to allow marketers to run and analyze relevant ads in a privacy-friendly way, reducing cross-site tracking and collection of unnecessary personal data.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because Apple has been doing the same thing since 2017. Their Intelligent Tracking Prevention blocks third-party cookies from Safari browsers, so with Google joining in, third-party cookies may eliminate third-party cookies completely. This initiative primarily benefits consumers, as their personal data will no longer be collected, used and traded.
What does this mean for marketers?
Third-party cookies are the main way that marketers learn about user trends and attributes. Statista reported that almost 83% of marketers rely on third-party cookies to inform their campaigns. The removal of these third-party cookies will have a significant impact on many areas of the advertising space, but alternative solutions are slowly emerging.
With users categorized into topics anonymously, brands won’t be able to utilize audience specific targeting, so ads will not be able to reach their target audience as well as before. This will likely worsen campaign performance and browsing experience for users with more generalized ads. It is also predicted to increase the costs of ad targeting for marketers. Without third-party cookie data, many ad platforms that require this data will take a massive hit, leaving limited alternative options for these companies.
However, although this does cause concern, there are many more secure alternatives that marketers can use!
You can still use first-party cookies to collect data on your own websites, the user data just won’t be recorded across their browsing journey. This first-party data must be collected and stored in compliance with the law (e.g. GDPR requirements), which can be complicated and costly. First-party data is great for identifying how users found your site, understanding their demographics, and retargeting customers. This data also provides you with a competitive advantage, as your company is the only one with access to it!
Server-side tracking may replace third-party cookies while also complying with privacy laws. This tracking involves reliably collecting data from websites and delivering it to servers such as Google and Meta, giving you more control over your audience’s data.
Another way around this elimination for marketers is to simply go straight to the source and ask their customers for information! By volunteering information, customers can share their preferences and needs, and allow marketers to create effective campaigns. Customers are willing to share information online when asked, often preferring it to being tracked by cookies! This increases rapport between marketers and audiences, which could dramatically improve campaign performance.
For those who advertise on Meta, make sure you have enabled first-party cookies with the Meta Pixel, and connect your conversions API in order to use first-party data for ads attribution and audience targeting. This should reduce the impact of the third-party cookie elimination, but we won’t know for sure until the end of this year.
Consumers value their privacy more than ever, so marketers will have to adapt to these changes, think of creative campaigns to build trusting relationships and engage their audiences without using third-party cookies. Innovative marketers will no doubt create clever alternatives that could revolutionize the digital marketing space.
